People Before Profit blog

Greece Lurches to Left Amid Radical Austerity

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:55:00 +0000

A Political Establishment in Freefall

A radical austerity drive has triggered the biggest political upheaval in Athens since the end of the military dictatorship in 1974. So far, it is leftist parties who have benefitted the most from the debt crisis. The deeply divided left, however, would likely be unable to form a stable coalition.Alexis Tsipras walks up to the lectern like Elvis strutting onstage. But when he begins to speak, all traces of youthfulness and ease vanish from his face. The "foreign loan sharks" have one thing on their minds, he barks into the microphone: "the impoverishment of the Greek people and the sellout of our country!" He slams his fist down and continues his speech, his voice booming. The Europeans, he says, are pursuing only one goal: to bring about the end of the sovereign Greek nation. "We must prevent Greece from becoming a German protectorate once again," Tsipras says, practically shouting by now. "We are not a German colony."

The crowd applauds loudly in the packed gymnasium in Peristeri, a suburb of Athens. The words "The Left's Response in Greece" are written in bold letters on a banner on the wall behind the lectern. Tsipras, 37, wearing a black suit and a purple shirt, is the main speaker this evening.

It is cold and the room is unheated, but the will of the assembled crowd to wage resistance remains unbroken. They should be punished immediately, these European traitors, a man who looks to be about 60 hisses in the direction of the lectern. A female student is sitting next to him, and both are clapping enthusiastically.

Tsipras, the man with the harsh rhetoric, is the head of SYRIZA, or the Coalition of the Radical Left. According to the polls, he is currently the second-most popular Greek politician. Only Fotis Kouvelis, the chairman of the more moderate Democratic Left (DIMAR), is more popular than Tsipras.

A Country in Flux

There are many uncertainties in Greece today: whether the country can remain in the euro zone, whether the €130 billion ($171.8 billion) second bailout packagewill sufficiently reduce the insolvent country's staggering debt load, and whether the Greeks will ever implement the reforms their international creditors are demanding of them. At the moment, only one thing seems predictable: that nothing will remain the same. "Everything is changing, and everything is frightening," writes the newspaper Kathimerini.

Only with great difficulty was the transitional government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos able to commit last week to the reforms that the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had demanded -- and its commitment came at a high political price. The nationalist right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) withdrew from the government, and the heads of the two large traditional parties, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND), or New Democracy, saw 43 of their members resign or be expelled from their respective parties.

The lesson can be summed up with two words: "panta rhei," or everything flows. No political commentary these days describes the situation in Greece as clearly as these words from ancient Greece.

The Divided Left

The political system is in its greatest turmoil since the end of the Greek military dictatorship in 1974. And the political establishment is in free fall.

According to surveys, the parties that benefit most from the crisis are those on the left, traditionally strong in Greece, which also include Tsipras's SYRIZA coalition.

Public Issue, a polling firm, estimates SYRIZA's approval rating at 12 percent, and that of Kouvelis's Democratic Left at 18 percent. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the oldest party in the country, stands at 12.5 percent approval. Combining the approval ratings of these three leftist parties would theoretically yield 42.5 percent, enough to form a government, even without PASOK, the socialist governing party of former Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou. Since winning the 2009 election with 43.9 percent of the vote, PASOK has now dropped to an 8-percent approval rating -- one of the biggest declines European election experts have ever seen.

Even if the pollsters say that the answers are changing more quickly than they can ask the questions, the trend is the same among all polls conducted by the major opinion research institutes: the two-party dominance of PASOK and ND, which have divided up the cabinet seats and perks for almost 40 years, is over. An election will be held in April, although the exact date has yet to be determined.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that a united left could win the next election and ensure a stable parliament starting in the late summer. The Greek left is deeply divided.

Standing Up for the Euro

"Coalitions are difficult," says Tsipras. An engineer who has been politically active since his school days and later became the leader of a radical student organization, Tsipras might be willing to form a coalition with the KKE, but he can't. Although the Communists, like his party, are opposed to the loan agreements with the troika, they also -- true to their latter-day Stalinist traditions -- want out of NATO, out of the EU and, of course, out of the euro zone.

Tsipras, on the other hand, wants to keep the euro. He wants "Greece to remain a systemic problem for Europe." He argues that this is the only way to ensure that the billions from the bailout packages are actually disbursed, and the only way to ensure that Europe, fearing the risk of contagion that would emanate from a Greek bankruptcy, will defer Greece's debts, or perhaps even forgive them one day. This is what Tsipras is betting on. It's a crude, extortionist way of thinking.

When Tsipras speaks, it sounds as if the mountain of debt had fallen on Greece by pure happenstance. He believes that the country's plight can be blamed on "international capital" and the "false Protestant principles of (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel." His recipe calls for more loans to stimulate growth, and he thinks the ECB should simply print more money to help Greece. Aside from a proposal to raise taxes on wealthy ship owners, Tsipras has no truly groundbreaking reforms to offer.

Tsipras's popularity with voters may have something to do with his stubbornness, his taste for polemics or his lack of self-criticism. But these traits also make him unacceptable as a coalition partner to another leftist, who is currently Greece's most popular politician.

The New King of the Hill

Fotis Kouvelis, 61, has a friendly but somewhat anxious expression on his face, as he sits, surrounded by leather-bound folios, in his Athens law office, 50 meters from the parliament building. A framed political cartoon of his face hangs on the wall behind him. He was Greece's justice minister for three months in the late 1980s.

According to polls, his Democratic Left is currently the country's second-strongest party, next to the conservative Nea Dimokratia party. The sudden popularity seems to make Kouvelis feel a little uncomfortable. Polls are polls, and nothing else, he says. He calls Tsipras's demands "unrealistic." The two men are old acquaintances. In 2008, they fought bitterly over the leadership of SYRIZA. Kouvelis lost the power struggle.

"The country must change," he says. He points out that reforms are not just important to reduce the country's debts, but are also vital to the cohesion of Greek society. Kouvelis wants to transform the new loan agreement, which his party also doesn't support, into a "growth plan" -- with the help of EU funds and the European Investment Bank. He wants the ECB to buy up Greek government bonds, and he wants the EU to be a little more patient with Greece.

He has no interest in launching into angry tirades against Merkel, but Germany still worries him. A German Europe isn't what is needed, and "German financial and economic hegemony" scares him, he says.

Kouvelis's party owes most of its success to the spectacular decline of PASOK and its chairman, Papandreou. The former prime minister and heir to an influential political dynasty still refuses to step down as party leader. The certainty that he will be the last Papandreou of a party nicknamed the Papandreou Party doesn't make saying goodbye any easier.

Turbulence on the Right

But the breakdown of established politics isn't just limited to PASOK. Almost more dramatic was the admission of complete failure that Antonis Samaras, head of the conservative ND, made last week. Samaras, who threw former Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyannis out of his party in May 2010 because she had voted for the first aid package, had now kicked 21 members of parliament out of the party -- because they voted against it.

His rivals aren't the only ones calling him a flip-flopper. If the polls are correct and the ND still has the support of roughly 30 percent of voters, it might even be enough for Samaras to fulfill his greatest wish and become prime minister in April. But Nea Dimokratia's showing in the election will hardly be sufficient to form a government on its own, and it probably won't even be enough to form a grand coalition with the greatly weakened PASOK.

Greece will only qualify for additional aid if the government in Athens, regardless of its makeup, accepts the conditions of a second bailout program. This is what the IMF and the EU are demanding. Neither Tsipras nor Kouvelis will be willing to consent to such a coalition agreement.

And now that the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS party) has deserted the transitional government, Samaras also cannot hope for coalition partners on the right.

According to recent polls, the ultra-right Hrisi Avgi party ("Golden Dawn") now stands a chance of surpassing the three-percent threshold to acquire seats in the new parliament. But the party would not be a viable coalition partner for Samaras.

The Golden Dawn fascists preach the "superiority of the white race and the Greek nation." Greece's prospects are bleak indeed.

ENTER THE DRAGON

Clare Bayard — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:05:00 +0000

via Washington's Wars and Occupations: Month in Review #81
January 31, 2012
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

Welcome to the Year of the Water Dragon. It's time for the 99% to make some serious waves.

This year opened with the first anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising, which gave birth to a new Egypt and inspired bottom-up movements around the world. We look ahead to what ground may be gained by these uprisings and movements that have not yet reached their adolescence.

This is a moment of new possibilities. The crumbs of empire have dwindled sufficiently that more people than ever in the U.S. are seeing their own interests opposed to the ruling elite, opening the door to building greater global solidarity. From Yemen to Nigeria to small towns in the Rust Belt, grassroots movements have shot up through cracks in the pavement of inequity.

Within the U.S., the 1%'s agenda of austerity and war-making is being challenged in the streets and spotlighted in mainstream media. But the upsurge of popular movements is still fighting uphill. Economic exploitation and resource wars still shape peoples' daily lives worldwide. The elite's austerity programs have not yet been slowed. And though the type of war-making Washington engaged in for the last decade has taken some major hits, the U.S. has only adjusted its approach, not cut back its violence and aggression. Our antiwar strategies must evolve in response, broadening our scope and becoming as much a movement against militarism and the military-industrial complex as a campaign against specific large-scale U.S. wars.

THE U.S. MILITARY: VERSION 2012

In the first week of the year, Obama announced his official plan for reorienting the U.S. military.

This shift is packaged as a move towards a smaller, more agile military. The change is said to be driven by the difficulties (they won't say losses) Washington encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan, by domestic fiscal crisis, and by alleged threats from China and Iran.

This restructured military orients away from battlefields towards airstrikes and maritime chokepoints. From the targeted assassination of Osama bin Laden to the team of Navy SEALS who parachuted into Somalia to rescue American and Danish hostages while Obama was delivering his State of the Union Address, special ops and "surgical strikes" is the new U.S. specialty. This new doctrine raises questions about the redefined goals of waging war.

Obama's doctrine explicitly focuses on the oil-rich "arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia". The increased emphasis on air and sea power maintains the imperial agenda of controlling oil transport.

The new doctrine also marks an escalation of two key trends during the past decade: increased privatization and remote-controlled warfare. Internal military functions have been largely outsourced. Combat is being privatized through contractors and transfer of U.S. Armed Forces functions including prisoner of war detention over to the CIA. The "trimming" of 100,000 service members will speed this.

The exponential growth of investment into unmanned arms systems is a cash cow for corporations. The Defense Department earmarked $18 billion over five years, and estimates $37 billion for development through 2020. The Air Force now trains more drone operators than fighter pilots, and PTSD is already appearing amongst operators launching Hellfire missiles that have killed about 2,000 people in Pakistan alone, averaging one strike every four days.

The Pentagon has almost 7,500 more drones than before 9/11 - a third of U.S. military aircraft. The "War on Terror" jumpstarted this new phase of warfare, currently focused on Pakistan. Last year also saw attacks on Somalia, Libya, and Yemen.

Transparency and oversight are slipping away even from the imperial army. The CIA, not the military, runs the drone program against Pakistan. The Obama administration will not officially discuss the program, not even to confirm or deny its existence. A secret base is under construction in Ethiopia, and the U.S. has use agreements with a number of other countries in Africa and elsewhere to use as staging and launching facilities. Secrecy in the oversight of programs bombing civilians is not a new development for the U.S. - ask Cambodians. But the number of functions transferred to corporations with government ties, and the amount of money changing hands, has reached new levels.

Accountability and the chain of command have entered the science-fiction future. This month, the first unmanned and unpiloted drone entered a new phase of testing in Maryland. Soon computer-programmed missions may eliminate the human finger on the trigger entirely.

DOMESTIC SIDE OF THE MILITARIST COIN

The domestic side of the militarist coin is the stateside police growing ever more indistinguishable from the Army. The Occupy movement has provided an excuse for local and state law enforcement to request and utilize even more military equipment. Levels of violence that had once been deemed acceptable when used only against communities of color, homeless and poor people and queers have come back around for use against college students with linked arms and middle-aged unemployed moms protesting bank bailouts.

This month, the Border Patrol acquired its ninth Predator drone, the Army's favorite $20 million baby. The use of a drone in North Dakota to arrest three cow thieves in December broke the issue of using drones on civilians - or rather, on citizens. Anti-immigrant racism had curbed outrage against the drones that have already been continuously flying a loop from California to Louisiana, detaining almost 5,000 undocumented people in the past six years.

As always, what we allow to happen to marginalized communities expands to hurt everyone.

With very little outcry from anyone outside the usual suspects, the National Defense Authorization Act was passed. The NDAA legalizes practices including indefinite detention already being used against non-U.S. Citizens. It gives wide berth to whatever strategies for repressing domestic dissent may be required by the 1% in the coming years.

NEOCON REPUBLICANS WANT EVEN MORE

The prolonged theater of the Republican primaries reveals the spectrum of full tilt white supremacist nationalism that the right wing considers currently viable. Gingrich won South Carolina by upping dog whistle racism to a foghorn blast with his characterization of Obama as the "food stamp" president. This blatant racism, twinned with American nationalism, hypes a "war of civilizations" mandate to destroy all those dark-skinned and Muslim "others" who are allegedly out to destroy white Judeo-Christian civilization.

Obama's revamped military has drawn intense fire from the Neocon hawks, who claim it shows Obama wants to gut the military and weaken U.S. defenses in order to spend money on food stamps. They still champion the dream of massive ground wars for regime change and resource control, along with slashed safety nets. From the team of people who brought us the "Endless War," John Yoo of the "Torture Memos" published a call-out for the GOP candidates to jumpstart war with Iran. In South Carolina, GOP candidates vied with each other for who could get the biggest ovation for their variation on "Kill them all."

"We'll stand with Israel" banner-waving is another key card for Republicans. Romney brings a promise of partnership with Netanyahu, while Gingrich brings up the rightwing rear with his comments about Palestinians as an "invented people." The extremist pro-Israel barrage dovetails with calls for a war against Iran.

NO WAR AGAINST IRAN

Halting the march toward war against Iran is an urgent task. Within Iran, assassinations of scientists and acts of sabotage have been taking place. EU Sanctions against Tehran are being tightened. And Israel (which has 250-plus nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty) keeps calling Iran (which is not proven to have a nuclear weapons program and which is a signatory to the NPT) an "existential threat."

There are signs that the Obama administration is trying to "lower the temperature." They postponed a joint military exercise with Israel that was the largest ever planned. But statements from top administration officials give mixed signals, and the State of the Union left the door wide open to war.

Following Tehran's announcement in mid-January that it was willing to resume talks with the West on its nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu used International Holocaust Remembrance Day to reaffirm his willingness to launch a military assault. Demonizing Iran is the Netanyahu faction's go-to for taking the world's attention away from Israel's seizure of even more Palestinian land.

The main policy makers in the Obama administration, as well as most of the U.S. military brass, seem to think an attack on Iran would be a terrible blunder. They fear it would further destabilize this crucial petroleum-producing region; wreak havoc with the global economy; unite the Iranian people behind a regime Washington wants to change; and further weaken the U.S.'s position in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it's dangerous to rely on realist calculations or inconsistent Neocon/Israeli hesitations to back off an unpromising war? Only a popular outcry from the U.S. populace that effectively counters the current war crusade can tip the scales decisively against potential catastrophe.

'ARAB SPRING' MATURING - ALSO ALIVE ACROSS AFRICA

As we reach the one-year anniversary of Mubarak's ouster, the Arab Spring is a project in process. Egyptians continue to demand real change as the military council has continued Mubarakism. The ripples have also spread far beyond Egypt, throughout the Arab world and the African continent.

On the January 25 anniversary, over 100,000 Egyptians turned out to claim the revolution as their own and not the military council's. The Peoples' Assembly now sits preparing to create Egypt's new constitution, after what many called the "cleanest and most democratic elections since the 1950s." The Muslim Brotherhood won a majority of the seats. While the new Assembly took oaths (some MP's wearing the slogan "No to military trials"), protestors on the street challenged the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' conduct and reluctance to yield power. In a beautiful convergence, four different marches on Parliament merged together and unified their slogans as they approached the barbed wire and soldiers blocking them from the building. The marches were against military trials, for the relatives of the martyrs of Tahrir Square, trade unionists, and several thousand artists demonstrating for freedom of creativity.

Far less publicized in the U.S. were the significant uprisings and protests that took place 25 African countries in 2011. Africa, with its tremendous energy and tech-industry resources, will be a key global battlefield in this coming year.

2012 dawned with a massive national strike in Nigeria against the overnight doubling of gas prices due to removal of subsidies. Pambazuka News noted that people were in the streets protesting even before labor unions officially called for the strike. Days later, up to 120,000 Occupy Nigeria protestors claimed ground for the 99%, staging the biggest Occupy protest yet. This level of concerted demonstrations in Nigeria might be emblematic of the contradictions in post-colonial nations, fighting the accumulated impacts of decades of the "neoliberal model" of capitalism (privatization and subsidies for corporations, austerity for the masses) hitting common people, and exacerbating any and every divide-and-rule schema. These massive street demonstrations by the 99% occur at the same time that over 100,000 Nigerians have been displaced by attacks by fundamentalist Islamic group Boko Haram, in which hundreds of people have been killed.

India and China also made moves this month to broaden their African footprints. China funded and built the new African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, which President Hu Jintao's leadership inaugurated January 28 as China's "gift" to Africa. China is entering its third year of beating out the U.S. as Africa's biggest trading partner, which it has built up by 10,000% over the last ten years (from $10 billion in 2000 to $114 billion in 2010).

The U.S. continues to hover over Africa, expanding AFRICOM, building up adjacent bases and proxy agreements, as well as newly surfaced secret prisons in Somalia and the Horn. Strong U.S. movement is needed against resource wars in Africa. Some of these will be marketed as "humanitarian interventions." Others may build off the propaganda successes of air striking Libya and killing Qaddafi 'for human rights'. This is 2012 in U.S. wars to "spread democracy and liberty."

RESISTANCE TO WAR - AND TO MILITARISM

The Occupy movement (wintering like a healthy plant; pulling back some leaves while deepening its roots and turning toward foreclosure defense and reclaiming commons) has injected new energy into every progressive movement, including the antiwar movement.

The 99% zoomed in this month on banks and the corruption of the criminal justice system. Nationally, the turn towards building occupations as foreclosure defenses, foreclosure auction disruptions, and reclaiming commons has also decentralized many Occupy encampments from downtowns out into neighborhoods. In Alabama, a current frontline struggle against vicious legislative attacks on the state's small immigrant population, Occupy joined to support migrant and Black-led efforts to push back racial profiling and detention

Occupy energy has helped fill the sails of "Move the Money" campaigns. It has emboldened rank and file union activists, an increasing number of whom have been adding their voices to the antiwar pole in labor long nurtured by US Labor Against the War.

Antiwar veterans' organizing meanwhile goes beyond opposing specific U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It spotlights militarism returning home in the bodies of veterans, and reminds the rest of the country about the millions in the 99% who are Iraqi or Afghan. After years of grassroots pushing, mainstream media coverage is increasing on issues of soldier suicide, PTSD, and even military sexual trauma. VoteVets a large liberal veterans' advocacy organization, called out retired General William Boykin for his Islamophobic remarks about the U.S.'s holy war. These are promising signs for the development of a broad anti-militarist movement.

Other action continues against U.S. wars abroad despite their receding profile. Grassroots Global Justice, with its network of community-based organizations connected to international peoples' movements, continues its "No War, No Warming, Build a People's Economy." GGJ will be one of many groups across the country and the world mobilizing for the protests and counter-summit planned for the G8/NATO meeting in Chicago this May, bringing concerns and visions from communities of color.

An emerging multi-faceted antimilitarist movement can build off existing alliances. Iraqi trade unionists and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq continue to reach out, both in support of formations like USLAW, and in reminding the U.S. that the people of Iraq retain the right to demand reparations. Iraqis continue to demonstrate almost weekly for basic rights and needs. Solidarity remains a priority as U.S. troop withdrawal drops Iraq out of news, although the U.S. has left not only tens of thousands of contractors and mercenaries, but social and environmental wreckage and a nonfunctional state.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, whose third point of unity is reparations to the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan), is taking steps on the slow road towards reparations and responsibility. In areas including Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, IVAW is building face-to-face relationships with local Iraqi refugee communities. This work underpins IVAW's organizing to withdraw labor power and legitimacy from Washington's wars.

MILITARISM: ONE OF THE "GIANT TRIPLETS" THAT MUST BE DEFEATED

Anti-militarism must be central to the U.S. progressive movements as we reorient to 2012 conditions. Efforts that may be small today provide seeds that will grow larger action, such as this month's delegation of LGBTQI leaders to the West Bank to build the boycott/divestment/sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid. Others, like campaigns to cut the military budget and "move the money" to human needs, intersect with debates that are front page headlines. All these are critical, and must be woven together. As the 99% search for a political compass to ground our resurgent energy, it is useful to recall Martin Luther King Jr.'s words from another time of racist onslaught and imperial war:

"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Such guidance, infusing new visions for 21st century alternatives, can help our movements dance delicately but powerfully - like a water dragon.

Trial of Greek Unionists Opens in Athens, Will Continue on Jan. 20!

CHRISTEL KEISER and DOMINIQUE FERRE — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:10:00 +0000

(article reprinted, in a slightly abridged form, from the January 11-18, 2012, issue ofInformations Ouvrières [Labor News], the weekly newspaper of the Independent Workers Party (POI) of France)

At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, January 10, the Electrical Workers Union of Greece (GENOP), issued a press release stating that the trial of GENOP President Nikos Photopoulos and his 14 comrades, which opened that very morning and was slated to conclude in one day, will continue on January 20.

The court was scheduled to hear testimonies from witnesses, but only five prosecution witnesses testified.

Among the unionists and activists present in the court to support Photopoulos and his comrades were Christos Polyzogopoulos, past president of the main Greek trade union federation (GSEE), and Manolis Glezos, the famous Greek resistant who took down the Nazi flag from the Parthenon on May 30, 1941.

The same January 10 GENOP press release noted the widespread international solidarity campaign with their union, pointing out, in particular, that high-level delegations of trade unionists had been received during the day at the Greek embassies in Madrid and Paris.

It should also be noted that the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Solidarnosc in Poland sent letters to the Greek authorities urging that all the charges against the 15 electrical workers should be dropped.

Photopoulos and his 14 union comrades face up to five years in prison for organizing a sit-in/occupation of the main public power offices in Athens on November 24-28, 2011, to ensure that working-class families continue to have power in their homes after management, following directives from the government and the European Union, cut off their power because of a mass refusal to pay a fee hike, considered an unjust tax, and/or the people's inability to pay their bills due to the crisis.

The GENOP union is led by activists belonging to PASOK (Greek Socialist Party) who oppose the austerity measures enacted by the PASOK government of George Papandreou and who today oppose the National Unity Government (between PASOK and the right-wing parties) headed by Lucas Papademos. The union took a strong stand, in particular, against the privatization of the electrical power company demanded by the Troika (IMF, European Union, and European Central Bank).

A new and significant development in this campaign occurred January 4, when the leadership of the GSEE trade union federation, which regroups all private-sector unions in the country, issued a statement in solidarity with the electrical workers' union and with the 15 unionists standing trial for defending the public utility and the Greek people. The GSEE leadership has been tied to the majority wing of PASOK. Their January 4 statement links the condemnation of the repression against the union with a refusal by the union federation to accept the new austerity measures demanded by the Troika in these first months of 2012.

Regional and local branches of the GSEE, in fact, have warned that if the new attacks by the Papademos government, under orders from the Troika, are not withdrawn, they will go out on strike in the industrial ports of Piraeus, Elefsina and Lavrio on January 17.

In these new conditions of increased international solidarity and heightened working class resistance at home, it is understandable why the Greek government hesitated to sentence the 15 electrical worker unionists and adjourned the trial till January 20.

During these extra 10 days we urge all trade unions the world over to redouble their solidarity efforts and send their messages of support to the GENOP 15.

We can and must compel the Greek government to drop the charges against these courageous unionists.

[See Sample Message below with email addresses where message should be sent.]

* * * * * * * * * *

SAMPLE MESSAGE:

Trade union leader Nikos Photopoulos, president of the GENOP-DEH electrical workers' union, along with 14 of his colleagues, is due to stand trial on January 10, 2012, for occupying a government office to protest the denial of electricity to people unable to pay the new property taxes and utilty rate increases imposed on all Greek homes.

Nikos and his colleagues are not responsible for the crisis that has led to this situation, but like them, he and his colleagues are facing having to pay for it -- in their case, with their freedom.

We call on the Greek authorities to drop the charges against trade unionists who are defending the right of citizens to unimpeded access to a vital public good that is doubly essential in these trying times of utmost hardship.

We urge the Greek authorities to abandon the prosecution of our Greek trade union colleagues.

* * * * *

Please send your statement (feel free to modify sample message above) to the following email addresses:

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos
<internationalmediaoffice@primeminister.gr>

Greek Minister of Labour
Ministry of Labour
<info@ypakp.gr>

Please send copies of your message to

GENOP-DEH Union :
<main@genop.gr>
<press@genop.gr>

and to

<eit.ilc@fr.oleane.com>

and

<ilcinfo@earthlink.net>

Class Conflict Awareness Rose Significantly From 2009 To 2011: Report

Luke Johnson — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:12:00 +0000

via the Huffington Post

Significantly more Americans see "very strong" or "strong" class conflict between the rich and poor, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. The results show that Americans think that conflicts between the rich and poor are stronger than immigrant and native born, black and white and young and old.

In 2009, 47 percent of respondents said there were "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between the rich and poor. In 2011, 66 percent saw the same, possibly signaling that the "We are the 99 percent" rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street has had an impact. The ongoing economic recession also may have magnified class differences as income inequality has risen, continuing a trend occurring in American society since at least the 1970s.

Democrats in general -- and President Barack Obama in specific -- have also spoken out about income inequality. "Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all," Obama said in a December speech in Kansas. The GOP front-runner for the presidency, Mitt Romney, has in turn charged Obama with promulgating the "politics of envy" and said that discussions over the distribution of wealth were "fine" to talk about "in quiet rooms in discussions about tax policy."

Media mentions about income inequality have also risen significantly since the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Pew survey found that whites had significantly larger increases in perception of class conflict than blacks and hispanics, rising to 65 percent from 43 percent in 2009. Seventy-four percent of blacks and 61 percent of hispanics see class conflicts, increasing by single digits from 2009.

The perception of class conflict has also intensified -- 30 percent see "very strong conflicts," a figure that doubled from 2009. marking the largest increase since the question was first asked in 1987.

Other social conflicts were less intense. Thirty-eight percent of Americans saw "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between blacks and whites, virtually unchanged from 2009, and 62 percent saw "very strong" or "strong conflict" between immigrants and native born, up 7 percent from 2009. Thirty-four percent saw "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between young and old, up 11 percent from 2009.

Grievances, however, against the wealthy did not increase, with 46 percent saying that rich people "are wealthy mainly because they know the right people or were born into wealthy families," and 43 percent saying they are wealthy because "of their own hard work, ambition or education."

Young people -- suffering the highest levels of unemployment -- see class conflict significantly more than older people, with 71 percent of people aged 18 to 34 seeing "very strong" or "strong" class conflicts while just 55 percent of people over 65 see them.

Republicans see class conflict less than Democrats and independents. GOP leaders have dismissed calls to raise taxes on the wealthy, calling it "class warfare." Still, 55 percent of Republicans see "strong" or "very strong" class conflicts in comparison to 73 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents.

New Obama Administration Initiatives Give Immigrants' Enhanced Stake in Election

Emile Schepers — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:53:00 +0000

Two modifications in U.S. immigration policy by the Obama administration will serve to reduce the frustration of the immigrants' rights and Latino communities and give them a greater stake in defeating the Republicans in election year 2012.

The first policy modification has been in the works since the middle of last year. It mandates that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is a part of the federal Department of Homeland Security, change its priorities away from mass deportation of undocumented immigrants to a focus on people with criminal records or who are otherwise considered a danger to society.

This policy change was discussed in an internal Homeland Security memo, called the “Mayorkas Memorandum” because it was evidently prepared at the request of Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service http://peoplesworld.org/lawmakers-back-plan-to-end-deportations-of-children-families/, which was leaked to the rabidly right wing National Review, William F. Buckley's old rag. In that memo, various options were presented whereby the federal government could legally back off on deporting various categories of undocumented immigrants not seen as representing a danger to the public or national security.

Then, in December, the Obama administration announced that, in effect, major sections of the Mayorkas Memorandum would now be policy. In practice, this meant that several categories of undocumented immigrants who have gained most public sympathy might be indefinitely spared deportation, and, while their final status would remain undefined, could also get work authorization. These would include people brought to the United States without papers when they were minors, and who therefore would be eligible for the DREAM act if and when Congress passes it, and also many undocumented parents and spouses of U.S. citizens, with “ties to the community”. About 300,000 people already in deportation proceedings would see these proceedings cancelled, while others in the same categories would not be put into deportation proceedings.

This would give a chance to stay in this country to a great many people whose future otherwise would be bleak. So most of the immigrants' rights movement reacted in a positive way to the initiative, only warning that actual implementation could represent real problems. And indeed, there are stories of both managers and individual immigration officers in ICE centers around the country indignantly refusing to apply the policy. A joint November 2011 report by the American Immigration Lawyers' Association and the American Immigration Council, who surveyed ICE offices on the subject, discovered a contemptuous and recalcitrant attitude amounting to sabotage on the part of some personnel, including at the supervisory level.

Now the administration has come up with a second policy directive which, though it sounds even more limited than the first, also could be helpful to thousands of mixed status families, meaning ones which have both U.S. citizen and undocumented members.

Prior to immigration reform legislation passed in 1996, an undocumented immigrant who was potentially eligible to regularize his or her status, that is to obtain eventual permanent legal resident status, through a family member who is a U.S. citizen, was supposed to return to his or her country of origin to do the paperwork at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and then wait for a visa. Sometimes, under paragraph 245 (i) of the then existing immigration laws, one could pay a $1000 fine and not have to leave the country. But after the passage of the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” of 1996, not only was the 245 (i) fine option phased out, but the person who returned to his or her home country was barred by law from returning to the United States for up to ten years, as a penalty for being here without authorization in the first place.

This “Catch 22” policy worked to either force undocumented spouses who might otherwise have become legalized to remain undocumented (because if they returned to their country of origin to apply for the visa, they might not be able to return for 10 years), or broke up families, or forced U.S. citizens to leave the United States in order to be with their families. The 285 (i) program was revived for a while after a campaign by the immigrants' rights movement, but at present only protects people grandfathered in from years ago.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that henceforward, in cases where potential extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen spouse or children can be proven, the undocumented individual no longer will have to return to the country of origin to wait for months or years for a visa, and will not be subjected to the ban of up to 10 years from entering the United States when they do so. Even though they will still have to make a trip to their countries of origin to finalize their visa applications, the 10 year ban trap will not snap shut on them--if they are approved for the hardship waiver.

Immigrants' rights activists and organizations, while reacting cautiously to this announcement as well as the previous one, described this step as highly positive.

There are an estimated 10.2 million undocumented immigrants in the country. An unknown, but believed to be large, proportion of them belong to mixed-status families, some of whose members may be U.S. citizens, others legal residents and yet others undocumented. A great many of these families will be able to get some kind of relief from one or the other, or both of the administration's new policies. And the hysterical reaction of the Republican right to these initiatives clearly shows that if they gain the White House in 2012, not only will there be no more steps forward in the future, but these two positive changes will certainly be taken back.

So the immigrants' rights movement, which had been expressing great frustration with the Obama administration for its failure to push immigration reform and especially for its ramping up of the deportation of undocumented immigrants to record levels, at last can point to a positive achievement that must now be defended in the electoral context.

However, there will still be many people who will not be able to get justice even with these changes: People who don't have U.S. citizen relatives, for example. In addition, although the federal government has gone after extremely abusive local authorities who have persecuted immigrants in Maricopa County, Arizona and East Haven, Connecticut, it continues to promote the idea of police-I.C.E cooperation which inevitably leads to racial profiling and the mass arrest of undocumented immigrants who represent no danger to the public, through its “Secure Communities” and 287 (g) programs. So the need for comprehensive immigration reform and for a basic change in the country's whole attitude toward immigration has not gone away. As far as the actual application of the new policies, a lot will hinge on how terms like “hardship” and “ties to the community” get defined by the immigration bureaucracy, and so those struggles are not over either. Finally, the exclusion of people with criminal records from any consideration is based on the false notion that the U.S. criminal justice system produces justice, whereas many would argue that what it produces is convictions, often of innocent people. That, too, is terrain that will be fought over. But at least, there is some forward motion.

Be Vewy Vewy Quiet

Paul Krugman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:34:00 +0000

via Paul Krugman's Blog

January 12, 2012, 8:38 AM

Andy Rosenthal gets a bit of a laugh out of Mitt Romney’s insistence that the only reason anyone would talk about inequality is the “politics of envy”, and that if the subject is discussed at all, it should only be in “quiet rooms”.

Indeed. Because there’s no way anyone who isn’t motivated by envy could be interested in and possibly concerned about this:

Trickle-down economics has now become shut-your-trap economics.

Daley to Depart as Obama Shifts Strategy to Confrontation From Compromise

via Bloomberg -- Mike Dorning — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:38:00 +0000

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/daley-departs-as-obama-shifts-strategy-to-confronting-congress.html

The departure of White House Chief of Staff William Daley reflects President Barack Obama’s choice to abandon a strategy of seeking accommodation with congressional Republicans and his critics in corporate America.

Daley’s resignation a year after taking the job is a “not inevitable but logical consequence” of Obama’s movement since September toward confrontation with Congress, said William Galston, who was a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

Jacob Lew, currently director of the Office of Management and Budget, will succeed Daley once he has completed work on the administration’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal, due to be delivered to Congress during the first week of February.

Obama turned to Daley, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and U.S. commerce secretary, in January 2011 as the president sought to improve relations with U.S. businesses and congressional Republicans following the 2010 midterm elections in which Democrats lost their House majority and saw their margin in the Senate shrink.

He was a central player in Obama’s failed attempt to reach a long-term budget deal with Republicans last July. The president’s job approval ratings plunged after the August standoff on the debt ceiling that brought the nation to the brink of default. Congressional Democrats criticized Daley for concessions such as Medicare cuts the White House offered in its attempts to achieve a grand bargain.

Speech Scheduling

Daley also took blame for a misstep in scheduling Obama’s Sept. 8 address to a joint session of Congress to announce his jobs plan. Daley spoke by telephone with House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, prior to the White House’s announcement of a speech and then Boehner publicly requested the speech be delayed a day.

After the $447 billion jobs bill was blocked in Congress, Obama changed course.

Going into the 2012 election, the president is seeking to portray himself as champion of middle-income Americans who is confronting Wall Street and an obstructionist Congress. He signaled his new message with a Dec. 6 address in Kansas, saying the nation is at “a make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

The strategy that Daley was supposed to implement “had hit a wall,” said Galston, now a governance analyst for the Brookings Institutionin Washington. “The skill set and the relationships that he brought were much less applicable to the new White House political strategy.”

Returning to Chicago

Daley, 63, informed the president of his decision to leave when he returned to Washington last week after the holidays. Obama said yesterday that he didn’t immediately accept it, and he asked Daley to think it over. In the end, Daley said he wanted to return to his hometown of Chicago, where his family has dominated local politics for decades.

“No one in my administration has had to make more important decisions more quickly than Bill,” Obama said. “There is no question that I’m going to deeply miss having Bill by my side.”

Lew, Obama said, “has my complete trust.”

The change is occurring as the White House gears up for Obama’s re-election campaign with the economy still struggling to gain steam and the unemployment rate at 8.5 percent.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Daley’s departure “makes it even more clear every decision is being made through the lens of re-election” at the White House.

Priebus said Daley had been hired to bridge a divide between Obama and U.S. business and “found himself trying to defend the indefensible” with the administration’s policies.

New Confrontation

Obama ratcheted up tension with congressional Republicans last week by installing Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board through recess appointments. Republicans had used procedural maneuvers to block Cordray’s confirmation.

Lew will be Obama’s third chief of staff. His first, Rahm Emanuel, resigned last October to begin his successful run to succeed Daley’s older brother, longtime Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who retired.

Lew brings continuity as a key member of Obama’s existing team and deep relationships from a long career in Washington that can be used either to ease negotiations with Republicans or strengthen partisan unity in battle, Galston said.

Congressional Relations

“If the name of the game politically is close coordination with the Democratic congressional leadership to respond tactically to whatever the controversies are or whatever the openings happen to be, I would expect him to be quite good at that,” Galston said.

Obama named Lew as his budget office director in July 2010. Lew, 56, previously served in the State Department and was budget chief under PresidentClinton. He also has experience in Congress, having served as policy director for the late House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Lew played a role in such bipartisan deals as the 1983 Social Security Trust fund rescue and the 1997 balanced budget deal when he was Clinton’s deputy budget director. Former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin called Lew “a very skilled negotiator.”

“He’s quiet,” she said. “He doesn’t throw his weight around, but he gets the job done.”

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the former top-ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Lew is respected by both parties as “a straight shooter.”

“He’s a partisan, but he’s a fair guy,” Gregg said.

A graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown Law School, Lew’s background also includes academia, as chief operating officer at New York University for five years, and the private sector, as managing director of Citigroup Inc.’s (C) Alternative Investments until January 2009 and chief operating officer of Citi’s Global Wealth Management before that.

Faster Than the Speed of Light, Occupy Wall Street Defies the Natural Laws of Politics

War Times — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:38:00 +0000

via War Times

Occupy has changed the country. People are fighting back. And the developments are happening faster than anyone could have guessed even a few months ago. The Occupy movement has gone from a few dozen in Zuccotti park in New York to thousands of participants in hundreds of cities. Across the country occupations have become pitched battles between the people's movement and municipal police forces.

The speed with which this unfolded, the degree of brutality leveled against the occupiers, and the resilience of the Occupy movement are all remarkable. In times like this the movement outstrips the best expectations of organizers and organizations. And while these developments defy simple explanation, their impact is undeniable. People are no longer talking about deficits and budget cuts, but about Wall Street and the one percent. Americans have fully joined people the world over fighting against austerity and empire, making 2011 a year of global resistance for the history books.

Occupy has a parallel in the world of physics. This month researchers working at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland and France have run two experiments in which neutrinos have been recorded apparently traveling faster than the speed light. Neutrinos, the subatomic misfits of the universe, known to pass through matter and inexplicably change form in travel, now also seem to move faster than light, something previously thought impossible.

So it is with Occupy. It has bypassed traditional forms of political mobilization, leaving more established organizations trying to play catch up. And the movement has changed form, from public occupations, to marches and rallies, civil disobedience and city-wide strikes - all faster than anyone would have expected. Occupy, the misfit of the political world, is defying the laws of political possibility.

But the forces opposed to Occupy are moving fast too. Occupiers have faced serious police repression around the country, with pepper spray attacks in Seattle and Davis, California, life-threatening injuries in Oakland, and in Seattle a miscarriage caused by police violence. The similarity of the timing and tactics of these attacks in cities as diverse as Portland and Denver has led to internet speculation that the police raids were coordinated at a federal level. Such speculation increased after Oakland Mayor Jean Quan told the BBC that the Department of Homeland Security had hosted conference calls with mayors to coordinate municipal response to Occupy.

Meanwhile, Wall Street's agenda of austerity for the poor and attacks on the public sector has not yet been derailed. In Europe, the bankers and bondholders are remaking governments and economies in Greece and Italy. But gutting the public sector and democratic governments may not satisfy the IMF and German bankers, nor avoid collapse. The euro zone's whole single-currency project is approaching a systemic meltdown that threatens to contaminate U.S. banks and to bring on a rerun of the 2008 crash, perhaps worse this time.

In the diplomatic sphere Washington's designs to occupy the globe have not changed either, despite significant setbacks. The Obama Administration is pushing an aggressive military posture in the Pacific, directed primarily at China. Moves include a major new military base in Australia, and strengthened ties with traditional Pacific Rim allies including a new free trade agreement with South Korea.

Efforts to establish an enduring U.S. presence in Afghanistan make it clear the Administration is not ready to abandon Central Asia anytime soon. In the Middle East, the United States and Israel's covert efforts to topple the Iranian regime got a boost this month from a new IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program. And the Obama administration continues to support forces it hopes it can control in countries touched by the Arab Spring.

"All day, all week - Occupy Wall Street"
The exponential growth of Occupy has pushed established organizations, particularly labor unions, in a positive direction. Although initially slow to appear, union support has been crucial in keeping Occupy alive. Unions like the SEIU have made considerable effort to quicken their organizing and direct action efforts. November 17th saw a national day of action to support the New York OWS after a police raid. That day, SEIU and union coalitions across the country staged demonstrations on bridges at rush hour, proclaiming "our bridges need work, and so do we."

Activists outside the traditional union movement organized the nation's first attempt at a general strike in 65 years in Oakland, California. (IWW activists were instrumental inpushing the general strike in Oakland and in Madison earlier this year). But once the mobilizations for the November 2nd Oakland general strike were underway, four local unions endorsed the strike. And it's not only unions that have felt the push from Occupy. Traditional civil rights organizations like the NAACP, have responded to the call. NAACP chapters in New York City joined a variety of people of color's labor organizations in an Occupy-inspired civil rights march.

Ten Months of Spring
Demonstrators in Tahrir Square, November 22, 2011. Photo: Shadi Rahimi

In Egypt, the country that has become the heart of the Arab Spring, demonstrators returned to the streets this week in the lead-up to national elections. Egyptians were upset at the slow pace of change and continuation of military rule. The immediate spark was a proposed political arrangement floated by the military that would have excluded the military from civilian oversight and permitted their legal intervention in the Egyptian political process. As in the United States, police action to clear Tahrir square of demonstrators only brought more people into the streets, leading to dramatic confrontations. Egyptian police killed 40 people in the third week of November. (Clickhere and here for War Times' Cairo correspondent Shadi Rahimi's photo essays on the latest Tahrir Square demonstrations.) In the face of such lethal repression, Egyptians' continued courage to mobilize in the streets to defend the January 25 Revolution is an inspiration to Occupiers worldwide.

The extremely complex electoral system devised by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's de facto ruler, means that the parliamentary elections begun on November 29 will not be concluded until sometime in January 2012. The mere holding of elections in a nation that began the year as one of the world's most autocratic dictatorships is a victory of no small significance. Yet as the recent wave of uprisings demonstrates, Egyptians are not satisfied. Many view the elections as a means by which the military may legitimize its rule, and through which established parties like the Muslim Brotherhood may gain further power. The revolutionary fervor is still strong in Egypt and portends good things for the region.

Washington Still Occupied
After years of U.S. focus on the Middle East and Central Asia, the Obama Administration seems to have remembered it has competitors in other parts of the world. The President spent much of his time in November traveling the Pacific, trying to reassert U.S. domination there. The key focus is China, which the United States treats rhetorically as a growing military threat in the Pacific basin. China has begun to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea, and launched a new aircraft carrier, China's first and only, a salvaged Soviet-era vessel in August of this year. Chinese military spending is the second highest in the world, but it's dwarfed by U.S. expenditures, which are still six times greater than China's.

A more immediate threat to U.S. domination, however, is Chinese economic growth, especially when the U.S. economy is in such trouble. In the last three years China has gone on a major buying spree, seeking to acquire natural resources and manufacturing assets in Australia, Africa, and South America. Chinese foreign direct investment has more than tripled in the last six years, climbing to over $185 billion in 2010 according to the IMF. China's strength in this realm can be seen in the current Euro Zone debt crisis, where EU ministers look to China to buy European bonds, and Chinese investorsproclaim their interest in British and German markets.

Libya has also been a site of Sino-American competition where Chinese projects before the civil war amounted to $18 billion. After the NATO invasion, Chinese trade with Libya dropped 50%, while U.S. and other western companies have rushed in. Recent U.S. military expansion in Africa should also be seen in light of its long-term competition with China. In the big picture, U.S. expansion in the Pacific, its planned base in Australia, renewed ties with the dictatorship in Burma, its actions in Libya and other parts of Africa, and efforts to negotiate a Trans-Pacific regional trade agreement, can all be understood as efforts to check Chinese ambitions. They also signal that competition with China is moving to the top of Obama's imperial agenda, and that the U.S. empire will be trying to reassert its muscle after some serious missteps.

Af/Pak
One site of consistent U.S. fumbling is Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. drone war in what planners call the "Af/Pak" conflict continues to inflame hatred of the United States. News of civilians killed in NATO drone strikes, including a recent attack in which six children died, has become routine. Afghan president Hamid Karzai worked furiously this month to assemble a loya jirga to approve a continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, perhaps as far into the future as 2024. The jirga agreed to let the Americans stay, but only if the United States ends night raids, closes its prisons, and ends immunity for its soldiers accused of crimes. As is often the case with Karzai, his objectives in staging the jirga are a bit opaque; certainly the conditions proposed are unacceptable to the U.S. military.

Meanwhile the entire U.S.-Pakistani relationship has been further strained after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Drone strikes inside Pakistan haveprecipitously increased under the Obama Administration. The Pakistani population is enraged at what they see as serious violations of Pakistani national sovereignty - the drone attacks that kill civilians along with their "legitimate" targets, as well as the assassination of Osama bin Laden earlier this year.

Divisions within Pakistan make U.S.-Pakistani relations even murkier. The latest drone strike comes on the heels of a leaked memo which suggests that last May elements in the Pakistani civilian government sought U.S. intervention to curb the power of Pakistan's military. The memo, addressed to then Joint Chiefs Chair Admiral Mike Mullen, promised concessions if the U.S. were to help prevent a military coup after the death of bin Ladin.

These grievances have caused Islamabad to block NATO shipments through Pakistan which makes supplying troops in Afghanistan almost impossible. The U.S.-Pakistani relationship is as bad as it has ever been, and it continues to get worse.

Iran, Israel, and the IAEA
The other major front of U.S. imperial ambitions is Iran. After the U.S. failure in Iraq, the example of Iran, a major Middle East power operating independently of U.S. influence, is intolerable. The latest fracas regards the new IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, (which Iran insists is for civilian use, although the United States wants to believe otherwise). The report alleges that Iran is working on a weapons program. However, asSeymour Hersh points out in the New Yorker online, the report is "old news," similar to the type of propaganda mobilized in the run up to the Iraq war. Hersh notes that in the report "hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established." Furthermore, an unidentified Russian scientist cited by the IAEA report as a key contributor to the Iranian weapons program turns outto be a specialist in nano-diamonds with no background in nuclear technology. (The new report follows a rather clumsy U.S. effort to implicate Iran in an assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador, in a bizarre plot supposedly involving an Iranian immigrant in the U.S. and Mexican drug cartels.) Nevertheless the US has used the IAEA report to slap new sanctions on Iran, calling its central bank a "threat," and issuing sanctions that could restrict the international oil supply. In response, Iran uncovered a series of CIA spy operations, the first in Lebanon was discovered by Hezbollah, and the second operating inside Iran itself.

Israel, which is even more keen to attack Iran, announced for the first time this month that it would not consult with the U.S. before launching a strike. Israel is in a tight spot. This summer it witnessed its own occupy movement, focused on the lack of economic prospects for young middle class Israelis, and highlighting the Netanyahu government's domestic failures. And Israel is facing isolation internationally. Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy and Obama have all been caught making what they thought were private comments expressing their personal dislike of Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, grassroots activism continues to force the occupation issue on to the front burner. Palestinians are waging weekly resistance demonstrations, and freedom ridersby bus and by sea continue to challenge the most egregious aspects of the occupation. The Palestinian Authority is pushing hard at the UN, and won a major victory at UNESCO, which voted to give the Palestinians full membership. The US and Israel retaliated immediately. The US cut its funding to UNESCO, representing 20% of the organization's entire budget. Simultaneously Israel is withholding the taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority, leading to major crisis in the West Bank. In Gaza, still choked by the blockade, Israel has resorted to outright bombings.

Austerity and Bank Coups
Domestically, Washington remains focused on debt reduction, attacking the programs that support working-class people, while the economy slides further into disrepair. The failure of the Debt Commission to reach an agreement only means that Congress will now be scrambling to avoid the automatic cuts to the Pentagon budget, cuts that will supposedly activate in 2013. In the short term it is a victory of sorts, kicking the can down the road as Congress tries to figure out how to make the cuts that will be extremely unpopular.

Austerity is also on the agenda in Europe, where the sovereign debt crisis threatens to collapse the entire European banking system, and perhaps spread to Asia and the Americas. Already banks and investors are trying to limit their exposure and restrict lending in the Euro Zone. Remarkably, mighty Germany had trouble selling state bonds at a recent auction. Even more remarkable still, European countries have turned to the BRICs, the developing countries of the third world as a potential source of capital to extend to troubled member states. This shift, away from the United States and the European first world, toward the rising powers of China, Brazil and India, as a source of capital is significant.

Behind all of this are the European and U.S. banking sectors, forcing working people to delay retirement, sell off state assets, and trim their pensions, health care, and school budgets, while wringing governments of every penny they can possibly collect. What's true in Jefferson County, Alabama and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is true at a much larger scale in Greece and Italy. The European Central Bank virtually staged a coup, withholding Italian bond purchases to drive up rates, impose fiscal insecurity in Italy and force out Berlusconi to be replaced with their "technocrat" of choice, Mario Monti. Meanwhile, the financial contagion is spreading, with international liquidity drying up, and a major collapse looming on the horizon.

Phase II - Occupy, faster than the speed of light
Things seem to be speeding up. The financial industry's occupation of Washington, Berlin, London, and now Italy and Greece are expanding - demanding more and more from populations less able and willing to give. And now Occupy, which has moved faster than the speed of political light, is looking for a way to survive the winter, and challenge directly the power wielded by state and private capital. There are numerous proposals put forward for OWS, from warnings of co-optation, to pleas to "occupy strategy." No matter what happens, we are entering a period of dramatic and quick changes in directions and at speeds previously thought impossible. It's up to us to organize, learn, and push progressive change even faster still. We need to keep our heads up. Things are getting exciting, the horizon of the possible is expanding, and more laws of politics are waiting to be broken.

Obama's Ominous Arming of Despots in the Gulf

Carl Bloice — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:57:00 +0000

via The Black Commentator
January 4, 2011

http://www.blackcommentator.com/453/453_cover_lm_obama_arming_gulf_despots.php

Just as the year was coming to a close, three prominent Iraqi political figures declared their country "stands on the brink of disaster." Rather than becoming a "a functioning democratic and nonsectarian state," Iraq is on the path to becoming" a sectarian autocracy that carries with it the threat of devastating civil war," asserted Ayad Allawi, named Prime Minister of the Iraqi Interim Government after the U.S. Invasion, Osama Al- Nujaifi, Speaker of Council of Representatives of Iraq, and the country's finance minister, Rafe Al-Essawi, on the opinion page of the New York Times. The country "has become a battleground of sects, in which identity politics have crippled democratic development."

The three men, leaders of the large political non- sectarian coalition Iraqiya that won the most seats in the 2010 election and represents more than a quarter of all Iraqis, said they are now " being hounded and threatened" by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "who is attempting to drive us out of Iraqi political life and create an authoritarian one-party state." Maliki, the three said, issues directives to military units, makes unilateral military appointments, interferes with the courts, has complete control over Iraqi intelligence and national security agencies, and serves the interest of Maliki's Dawa party that controls the Green Zone and intimidates political opponents.

Their country, the three politicians said, has become "the Iraq of our nightmares" in which "the nation's wealth is captured by a corrupt elite rather than invested in the development of the nation."

It would be hard to be more dismal that the picture Ali A. Allawi who previously served at different times has Iraq's minister of trade, defense and finance in succession between 2003 and 2006 drew for Time's readers this week:

"Agriculture has effectively collapsed; the great river systems of Mesopotamia have shriveled; trade routes based on Iraq's unique geography have vanished; and transport links have atrophied. Merchants and entrepreneurs are merely recyclers of state-owned and state-generated wealth and a
previously open and culturally and religiously accommodating society has been replaced by beleaguered communities locked in laagers."

For this over one hundred thousand Iraqis have lost their lives since the United States, under a phony pretext, invaded Iraq, overthrew its government, killed its head of state, and occupied the country for over nine years.

The U.S. - led coalition forces have lost 4,805 lives in battle, 4,487 of them young women and men from the United States. The number of U.S. military personnel wounded during the conflict is officially 32,226. However, Dan Froomkin, senior Washington Correspondent for the Huffington Post, has written, "The true number of military personnel injured over the course of our nine-year-long fiasco in Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands - maybe even more than half a million - if you take into account all the men and women who returned from their deployments with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress, depression, hearing loss, breathing disorders, diseases, and other long- term health problems."

Iraq has come a long way in nine years, from a time when the promoters of the U.S. invasion promised that the country's oil production would cover the cost of the war, to the day the country - unable to keep the lights on all day and with an unstable and near prostrate government in Baghdad-can now purchase over $6 billion in arms, including 36 U.S. F-16 fighters.

The planes are said to be necessary to protect Iraq's airspace. From whom? Iran? Kuwait? (The U.S. recently sold 209 Patriot missiles to Kuwait for about $900 million).

Similar question can be asked about our dealings with the tyrannical regime - women can't drive, thieves get their hands chopped off, etc - in Saudi Arabia. Last week the White House unveiled an arms deal with Riyadh of close to $30 billion, an agreement that will send 84 F-15 fighter jets and other military hardware to the kingdom. The deal includes spare parts, training and maintenance of the 70
advanced U.S. military aircraft Saudi Arabia already has on hand.

Significant pro-democracy protests have occurred and been repressed in Saudi Arabia's largely Shiites in Eastern Province all last year.

The only military operation that country has engaged in recently was an invasion, along with United Arab Emirates forces, of neighboring Bahrain to help the autocrats there brutally put down the local version of the Arab Spring.

Oh, Bahrain.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has stoutly defended the administration's plan to sell $53 million worth of armored Humvees and missiles to the tyrants there. The argument is that the sale is necessary to protect the country's security. But from whence comes the threat to the tiny nation that would require armored personnel carriers? Nearby Qatar?

There is a threat to the repressive Bahraini regime. Last Friday and Saturday, young people blocked highways throughout the country in protests against the country's royal family. Activists say a 15-year-old boy died after being hit by a tear gas canister at close range. The weekend clashes were the latest in pro- democracy protests that have occurred regularly since early last year.

Saudi Arabia has also intervened militarily in neighboring Yemen to suppress popular protests against autocratic rule. In November 2009 it staged artillery attacks and sent fighter jets into northern Yemen Thursday in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbor control an escalating local rebellion. "The Saudis - owners of a sophisticated air force they rarely use - have been increasingly worried that extremism and instability in Yemen could spill over to their country, the world's largest oil exporter," said the Associated Press.

Of Saudi Arabia, last Friday the Jerusalem Post reported: "In a statement released in Honolulu, where Obama is vacationing, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said the kingdom had an important role to play in keeping watch over the region, which has also seen protests and political turmoil in Yemen."

A White House spokesman boasted last week that the Saudi arms sales would give the US economy a $3.5 billion annual boost and help bolster exports and jobs. Needless to say, that's not the kind of cynical message many people expected from the Administration they helped elect three years ago. However, it sweet music in the ears of the U.S. armaments s industry.

As if the pot had not been sweetened enough, last week the U.S. sold the United Arab Emirates an advanced antimissile interception system for $3.5 billion as part of what Reuters described as "an accelerating military buildup of its friends and allies near Iran." The deal includes a contract with Lockheed Martin to produce the highly sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, weapon system. The White House has also formally proposed to sell 600 "bunker buster" bombs and other munitions to UAE for $304.

Lockheed Martin issued a statement saying the company is happy with the U.S.-UAE agreement on the first foreign sale of the THAAD system, Tom McGrath, a company vice president and program manager, said in a release. "We look forward to working with our customers to deliver this important capability," it said.

Needless to say, the official explanation for this rash of arms sales in the Gulf region is, in the words of the Associated Press, "part of a larger U.S. effort to realign its defense policies in the Persian Gulf to keep Iran in check." The problem here is that Iran is threatening none of its neighbors. If the concern is Teheran's nuclear program, fighter jets are unlikely to deter it. That is unless, the sudden accelerated transfer of military hardware is in preparation for the attack on Iran being promoted by hawks in Tel Aviv and Washington.

The aim of this military buildup is to secure the allied regimes in the Middle East, no matter how odious. In the process, matches are being strewn amid a tinderbox.

Jason Ukman of AFP reported that, "the Obama administration has sought to bolster its security relationship with Riyadh, despite their differences over the response to the Arab Spring." Whatever those difference might have been, this new level of strategic coordination is really aimed at keeping the popular uprisings in the Arab world from bleeding over into the oil-rich Gulf.

"This sale will send a strong message to countries in the region that the United States is committed to stability in the Gulf and broader Middle East," said Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. However, critics of U.S. policy toward the Gulf nations maintain that the arm sales only strengthen the forces of reaction, and that the "increased tensions" cited to justify the closer ties is actually an expression of the popular revolt in the region. And that the arms shipments are intended to prevent its successful spread to the Gulf monarchies.

Evidently, the Obama Administration's commitment to the notion of "Arab Spring" and promoting "democracy" in the Middle East is quite selective. While acting boldly to shore up the autocracies in the Gulf region, "senior U.S. officials are reported to be quietly preparing options to help dissident groups seeking to topple the reactionary government of Syrian President Bashar Assad," according to UPI. There are also reports of "a 2,500-person Arab intervention force" - mainly Libyan and Iraqis-on tap in Qatar, ready to invade Syria.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was all about oil, and the current effort to militarily shore up some of the most reactionary regimes in the Middle East is all about oil. The amazing thing is that even after it became obvious that the Iraq war had nothing to do with mythical "weapons of mass destruction," the U.S. political establishment and the major mass media wouldn't say it. It's not that they don't realize it; they just wouldn't say it. They won't connect the trillions of dollars worth of arms now being flooded into the region with petroleum. They still portray the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq as an effort to plant democracy and the current jet fighter sales as an effort to promote "stability in the Gulf and broader Middle East."

As the new year gets underway, it is quite obvious that U.S. policy and actions, under either the Bush or Obama Administration, has brought anything but "democracy" to Iraq, and the military buildup now underway is hardly going to bring "stability" to that devastated country or to the region.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Mr. Bloice is one of the moderators of Portside.]

Pells Grants Under Fire

John Case, with help from Jared Bernstein and CBPP — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:37:00 +0000

The President's emphasis on education in his Osawatomie Speech frankly means that free or highly subsidizedr subsidized higher education should be an explict part, not just phrasemaking in the domestic policy agenda.

Since the great leaps forward in education in the 1960's and 1970's, many barriers to both access to and completion of higher ed have arisen and most are consequences of as sustained atttack by Republicans on what used to be a bi-partisan consensus for a well-established role for government.

Despite these attacks and the consequent rise of education costs above what working class families can afford, there have been some recent accomplishments that perhaps have not gotten enough recognition, outside of conservatives who are actively hacking away at it. Namely, the increase in Pell grants.

Around 10 million undergrads get help from Pells these days, and the maximum grant was recently raised to $5,550. The figures below show a) the increase in Pell spending and b) the increase in the share of undergrads with Pell grants.

Source: Dept of Ed, (hattip: KM)

Jared Bernstein offers some comments on these numbers: "Importantly, according to the Dept of Ed, about 40% of the increased expenditures in the top figure is cyclical, i.e., due to the increase in college attendance that you expect to see in recession, as job opportunities become scarce. The rest would then be attributable to increased eligibility and higher grants."

This shows the administrations efforts in the face of the bleating ignoramuses chorus from the "the-world's-going-to-end-who-needs-to-read-anything-but-the-Bible" factions. Plus college tuitions have gone up too, almost as fast as health care, while incomes for most families have fallen in real terms.

As Kelsey Merrick has written: “…expansions to the Pell Grant program successfully shielded low- and moderate-income students from tuition increases in 2010. But the maximum award currently covers only 10 percent to 15 percent of the average costs of a four-year college.”

Pell grants will not by themselves overcome all the barriers kids from less advantaged families face in accessing and completing college,though they help. So why is the right wing gunning for the program?

Basically, because it’s increasing and any government spending outside of defense is automatically guilty without a trial, even though the trend is expected to flatten out soon.

Jared Bernstein writes: "The appropriations bill just negotiated cuts the number of Pell-eligible semesters from 18 to 12, thereby generally limiting grants to six years. It also reduces the family income level at which students would be automatically eligible for the grant from $30K to $23K (though higher income families can get grants depending on their means and the cost of their school)."

It’s not unreasonable to limit semesters of Pell but given that the six-year college completion rate is down to about 50%, the trends are very worrisome.

Here are immediate remedies that should be incorporated into the President's program:

1. support for programs that smooth the transition from 2-4 year colleges

2. protect Pell grants for families in the bottom half of the income scale

3. a federal countercyclical policy that automatically holds down tuition increases at public colleges in recession.

But producing a 21st century workforce that can lift the next generation higher requires more than short term remedies. Markets appear to place no cost on the failure to provide for the young and the unborn -- even less than hot-air charlatans gasping about unborn rights in the abortion debates. But the cost is vast. I do not agree with Paul Krugman and some others, by the way, who claim there is no "structural" crisis in the workforce. The mismatch of skills and the opportunities and requirements of the future is vast and and still growing. An entire industrial paradigm that planned for the future from the New Deal/WWII era has been crushed by the Reaganite financialization binge---and there is currently nothing in its place.

On education and youth, Mr President -- the time for action is NOW.

Unemployment and Payroll Tax Cut -- It Just Gets Worse

John Case, with help from Jared Bernstein — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:01:00 +0000

It beats me what is really going through the minds of the House Republicans. I am inclined to conclude its sewage. Some of them say its because they want a year-long extension to both unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut, not two months. However, I am doubtful of their truthiness on this. The refusal of Senate Republicans to tax the rich "to pay for" these benefits, and their demands that the pollution-expanding Tar Sands Pipeline from Canada to Texas ignore rulings and warnings from the EPA, are what caused the two month compromise in the Senate to start with.

We're also stuck there because these same House Rs injected a bottle of poison pills into their so-called year-long bill, including up to 40 fewer weeks of UI, drug testing and educational requirements for UI recips, delaying environmental standards, whacking federal workers, and cutting implementation funds for the Affordable Care Act. Its more likely they could care less about the year vs 2 months, and want to torture the unemployed and working class with their "hungry dog hunts harder" philosophy, and are just looking for cover to keep from being run out of office by their unemployed, undermployed and backbone-scratching-belly-button belt-tightened-to-a-noose constituents.

I am aware -- especially living in West Virginia --- that confronting the carbon pollution blackmail from the Republicans on the Tar Sands Pipeline issue may seem like a second tier issue to some. And I understand jobs are so scarce in many areas that an offer to build gallows on which we will be hanged could begin to look attractive -- but -- brothers and sisters, if we don't rethink this global warming question pretty soon, Noah is going to start getting calls from God to build another ark, and numbers I do not want to contemplate will perish.

**A news flash indicates the House has now defeated the Senate Bill. The Senate is already adjourned and homeward bound for Christmas. As Jared Bernstein writes, "all America can see right now is an unbelievably feckless Congress underperforming expectations that are already abysmally low."

There's a rising likelihood now that the UI extensions and payroll tax cut expire. Some fools are saying: "hey, it won't be so bad if we rush back in Jan and pass them...we can make them retroactive." I can't even imagine the levels of panic and apprehension that will grip working class families over the holiday contemplating such hogwash. Almost 2 million UI recipients could be dropped from the UI rolls. And most of them have been jobless for at least half a year, so it's unlikely they've got resources to fall back on. In my hometown, public and charity food programs are receiving fourfold requests for help over last year. Businesses to have to adjust payrolls to plug back in the 2% payroll tax cut that expires at the end of this year.

Dysfunction, thy name is the 112 Congress. Maybe the right name is "nullification" like the Southern fire-breathers who used similar tactics to defy federal authority over slave states.

What Happens If UI is Not Extended

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities -- Hannah — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:55:00 +0000

Republished from CBPP

About 1.8 million Americans will face a cutoff in unemployment benefits in January if Congress doesn’t extend emergency federal unemployment insurance (UI) before returning home for the holidays, according to estimates from the National Employment Law Project (NELP). The maps below show the sharp drop in the number of available weeks of benefits across the country.

The first map shows the number of weeks of benefits now available through the regular state UI programs and the emergency federal programs (details available here):

The second map shows the number of weeks that will be available if the federal programs expire the first week of January. Note that in six states, workers will have even fewer than the 26 weeks of benefits that state UI programs have historically provided because of cuts that these states made to the regular UI programs this year.

The NELP report (which includes state-specific estimates) says that the 1.8 million workers affected in January include:

Over 430,000 workers who became unemployed within the last six months and are receiving benefits through their state’s regular UI system, but whose benefits will expire in January, leaving them without access to any federal benefits. (Several hundred thousand unemployed workers exhaust their regular benefits each month — a trend that will continue over the coming year.)

Over 700,000 workers who have been unemployed for over six months and have been receiving benefits through the temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, which will expire in January. EUC provides benefits in “tiers” of weeks; people receiving EUC when the program expires at the beginning of the year will be allowed to complete their current tier but not move on to the next tier. NELP estimates that over 700,000 workers will reach the end of their current tier and thus receive no further federal benefits in January. Many more will lose EUC benefits prematurely in the months to follow.

Almost 650,000 workers who have been unemployed for over six months (most for over a year) and who are receiving benefits through the permanent Extended Benefits (EB) program. Without congressional action, this program will not be available in any state after the first week of January, and all EB recipients will be cut off.

As we have explained, UI is critical both for unemployed workers and for the economy, and the economy is still too weak to allow the current programs to expire.

The holiday season will be a whole lot bleaker for millions of jobless workers and their families if Congress does not act this week or next to maintain these critical programs.

War is Over -- Carl Bloice's Toon of the Day -- Dec 19, 2011

Jeff Danziger — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Politics as Usual

Jared Bernstein — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:25:00 +0000

I can’t bear to take you through the details of the current Congressional scrum. It’s another case of the new normal for this group, futzing around until the last minute, then jamming through some sort of patch that will hold things together until the next dysfunctional episode.

I will say this, however. Apparently, since they can’t agree on how to pay for a full year of extending the payroll tax break and Unemployment Insurance, they’re considering a two-month extension.

First of all, and I know that this is political sacrilege right now, but the smart thing to do is to not worry about a payfor. Yes, that means a higher budget deficit for 2012 but that’s okay for at least four reasons:

–the economy in general and the job market in particular is still very much recovering from the recession and needs the temporary lift;

–by dint of being temporary, the $175 billion or so of spending on another year of these two programs will have almost no impact of the longer term deficit (e.g., the $800 bn Recovery Act is expected to add 0.4% of GDP to the 2012 budget deficit);

–any payfors that start “too soon” would of course counteract the stimulus from payroll and UI;

–borrowing costs are very low; interestingly, market mechanisms, nudged by the Fed, are working as they should to keep interest rates low right now; it’s just that politics is preventing us from tapping this mechanism as part of the solution.

Second, there’s this: congressional conservatives have consistently complained about the uncertainty created by today’s economic policy. But by blocking a clean, year-long extension of UI, they’re needlessly creating exactly that—uncertainty and insecurity for working families struggling with joblessness.

OK–political hypocrisy ain’t a newsflash. They’re still trying to hammer out a longer extension, so stay tuned.

Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?

Ken Rogoff — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Editor: Ken Rogoff, politically 'moderate' Harvard economist and former IMF Chief economist is not bullish on capitalism, gives it a couple of decades to get its act together. I don't think it has that much time.

Continental European capitalism, which combines generous health and social benefits with reasonable working hours, long vacation periods, early retirement, and relatively equal income distributions, would seem to have everything to recommend it – except sustainability. China’s Darwinian capitalism, with its fierce competition among export firms, a weak social-safety net, and widespread government intervention, is widely touted as the inevitable heir to Western capitalism, if only because of China’s huge size and consistent outsize growth rate. Yet China’s economic system is continually evolving....

Perhaps the real point is that, in the broad sweep of history, all current forms of capitalism are ultimately transitional. Modern-day capitalism has had an extraordinary run since the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, lifting billions of ordinary people out of abject poverty....heavy handed socialism has had disastrous records ....but, as industrialization and technological progress spread to Asia (and now to Africa)... the struggle for subsistence will no longer be a primary imperative, and contemporary capitalism’s numerous flaws may loom much larger.

First, even the leading capitalist economies have failed to price public goods such as clean air and water effectively. The failure of efforts to conclude a new global climate-change agreement is symptomatic of the paralysis.

Second, along with great wealth, capitalism has produced extraordinary levels of inequality.... People do not complain about Steve Jobs’s success; his contributions are obvious. But this is not often the case: great wealth enables groups and individuals to buy political power and influence, which in turn helps to generate even more wealth. Only a few countries – Sweden, for example – have been able to curtail this vicious circle without causing growth to collapse.

A third problem is the provision and distribution of medical care, a market that fails to satisfy several of the basic requirements necessary for the price mechanism to produce economic efficiency....The problem will only get worse: health-care costs as a proportion of income are sure to rise as societies get richer and older, possibly exceeding 30% of GDP within a few decades. In health care, perhaps more than in any other market, many countries [without national health care] are struggling with the moral dilemma of how to maintain incentives to produce and consume efficiently without producing unacceptably large disparities in access to care.

It is ironic that modern capitalist societies engage in public campaigns to urge individuals to be more attentive to their health, while fostering an economic ecosystem that seduces many consumers into an extremely unhealthy diet. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, 34% of Americans are obese. Clearly, conventionally measured economic growth – which implies higher consumption – cannot be an end in itself.

Fourth, today’s capitalist systems vastly undervalue the welfare of unborn generations. For most of the era since the Industrial Revolution, this has not mattered, as the continuing boon of technological advance has trumped short-sighted policies.....But, with the world’s population surging above seven billion, and harbingers of resource constraints becoming ever more apparent, there is no guarantee that this trajectory can be maintained.

Financial crises are of course a fifth problem, perhaps the one that has provoked the most soul-searching of late. In the world of finance, continual technological innovation has not conspicuously reduced risks, and [instead] might well have magnified them.

In principle, none of capitalism’s problems [should be] insurmountable .... Nevertheless, as pollution, financial instability, health problems, and inequality continue to grow, and as political systems remain paralyzed, capitalism’s future might not seem so secure in a few decades as it seems now.

NY Times -- Carl Bloice's Quote of the Day -- Dec 16, 2011

Carl Bloice — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:02:00 +0000

Quote of the Day
December 16, 2011

'President Obama, who first ran for office campaigning
against the war, has never wavered on his promise to
bring the troops home. The last few thousand will be
out of Iraq by year's end. We celebrate their return.
But this country must never forget the intolerable
costs of a war started on arrogance and lies. '

Editorial
New York Times
December 16, 2011

http://tinyurl.com/83jxen5